Short Bio

Recent evidence suggests that a mother’s diet during pregnancy can influence the development of cardiovascular disease (CVD) risk factors in their adult children. Currently my research focuses on determining how this occurs. I speculate that maternal diet during pregnancy can influence gene expression in children through epigenetic processes, defined as heritable changes in gene expression that occur without a change in the DNA sequence of the gene. I’m conducting studies in mice to determine the roles of prenatal and early postnatal diet and the role of epigenetic processes in the development of CVD, and am addressing the questions: if diet during adult life can change epigenetic processes, what happens to offspring exposed early in development to a similar nutrient insult, and are there consequences later in life? Overall determining how diet and epigenetic processes contribute to CVD will aid in the development of early screening tools for at-risk children, and novel therapeutic targets for prevention and treatment of CVD.